Quote of the day: Against DADT discharges

Why and how the hell do we end up firing our best and brightest when we’re fighting in two wars? If Secretary Donley does not step in, this nation will lose a service member worth $25 million in training whose skill sets are desperately needed today.

-- Aubrey Sarvis (in washpost, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, commenting on the case of Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach who filed for a restraining order barring his discharge from the Air Force on DADT grounds.

Cases like this one, though, do have their value. To those who believe a gay man cannot be manly enough to serve with valor, Lt. Col Fehrenbach's 90 flight missions in three conflict zones defy that particular myth. And for those who believe that any gay person in a shower is obsessed with homosexual desires and will start playing games with soap, towels and strap-ons ... GUESS WHAT, you have been showering with gay comrades all along, you just didn't know it!

Bush v. Cheney

Sherlyn Gay Stolberg has drawn an interesting juxtaposition of the differences between Bush's brand-new reflective, candid mood and Cheney's unflagging bombast.

The difference in tone, friends and advisers say, reflects a split over Mr. Bush’s second-term foreign policy, which Mr. Cheney resisted as too dovish. It also reveals their divergent approaches to post-White House life. Mr. Bush, who is planning a public policy center in Dallas, is trying to shape his legacy by offering historians a glimpse of his thinking, while Mr. Cheney, primarily concerned about the terrorist threat, is setting the stage for a role as a standard-bearer for conservatives on national security.

I wonder whether Cheney will find many adherents in the post-Bush/Cheney era. From what I've gleaned in my readings of Conservative analysis, well, "I don't really think many Conservatives are hitching their wagon to your star, Dick."

Let's see: Spend a trillion dollars fighting a war for the past six years (a war whose very premise collapsed within the first few months), engender a heretofore unknown depth of hatred towards our country making it difficult to negotiate any issue to our advantage, give no-bid contracts in the most astounding act of cronyism and insider illegality ever to companies to which you have strong ties only to have it uncovered that they are defrauding our country and wasting our money and doing a really bad job in many cases, and spread our troops so thin and abuse their willingness to serve to such a degree that our military power is teetering. And, a full seven years after 9/11, only a miniscule percentage of incoming shipping containers are inspected, the Federal budget is so shot they're gonna have to take police back off the streets and defund Homeland Security programs, and that immensely sad gaping hole in my beloved downtown Manhattan, a site that was an engine of American competitiveness, profitability, and power -- well, today, seven years later, it is .... a sad gaping hole!

Pardon me for shouting, but WHAT DID ANY ACTION CHENEY TRUMPETED AND INFLUENCED HAVE TO DO WITH (1) CONSERVATIVISM, OR (2) NATIONAL SECURITY?

Syrian Raid Ripples

While the media feeds us a one-course meal of election news, over and over and over, who's minding the "Impact of US Policies" shop around the rest of the planet? Almost nobody. So between now and perhaps a week from now when election and post-election fervor finally starts to simmer down, I'll be sharing some spicy international dishes on this blog:

Dateline Nov 2, 2008, Damascus:

(Summary from the front page of Asia Times) The United States raid into Syria has upset every key actor in Iraq. The government, beyond being embarrassed at not being consulted, has come under even more pressure from Shi'ite parties not to sign a security agreement with the United States. The Sunni Awakening Councils are reconsidering their cooperation in fighting insurgents, while powerful tribes which virtually control the border are overnight turning anti-American. As for Syria, it has the power to cause havoc in Iraq.

Read Sami Moubayed's full article.

Sorry, You Can't Take the Sandbox Home With You

Washington Post: Maliki Suggests U.S. Troop Timetable

Iraq's new government should determine Iraq’s future. I'm glad to see that steps are being taken. Of course, I am concerned about the stability of the country, but nobody's saying the US should pull out all troops tomorrow. They're working on a timetable, and I'm sure that if the ground situation calls for it, Iraqi government will accept our helping hand. To stay in Iraq for the next 100 years would be an act of imperialism. Permanence of US bases on Iraqi soil would constitute, I believe, a quartering of soldiers, something the US Bill of Rights strictly prohibits here on American soil. The Declaration of Independence listed among the many usurpations by the king of England:

1. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws…

We cannot continue to hold troops in Iraq indefinitely and pretend to control their affairs. Iraqis are their own people. While they may be in need of resources we are (somewhat) capable of offering, they can make their own decisions. They’re not stupid just because their country is built on sand.

2. For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us…

I think you can see how this correlates to the “War”

3. For protecting them [troops], by a Mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders that they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States…

The Administration doesn’t even bother with mock trials. Do some research on BlackWater and other US contracted commando/mercenary organizations. Not to mention Abu-Ghraib type situations.

4. He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.

Oil fields anybody? How about the fact that US forces were totally ill prepared for the initial invasion (which everybody who was anybody knew) and allowed countless precious artifacts to be plundered that dated back to the birth of civilization? And of course we’re killing innocents, they look just like the “insurgents.”
(Aside: Isn’t it funny that we call the enemy the “insurgents” when we’re the ones committing to a surge of troops entering the sandbox?

5. He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.

Again, BlackWater. Waterboarding and other forms of torture were suggested/supported by Cheyney. Don’t let anybody tell you higher-ups in the Administration don’t support torture — they condone it.

6. He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us

We are responsible for the Iraqi civil war.

So, my message to al-Maliki (if you don’t know who he is, read a fucking newspaper article once in a while):
Be strong. Don’t allow US imperialistic values to bamboozle you. YET, we can be helpful. Meet diplomatically with leaders from the main political groups within Iraq and the leaders of surrounding nations (yes, even Iran). Figure out a plan that will lead to lasting stability, and use the US to your advantage. It will be difficult, there’s no doubt about that, but security is NEVER a reason to give up freedom, and freedom is not something to be trusted in the hands of US government.

thanks for serving your country, now FRY

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/world/middleeast/04electrocute.html